I didn’t watch the videos all the way, so if I installed it wrong let me know
I 3D printed a MGN rail. I do have one coming in the mail, but wanted to see if this will work. I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to edit the rail to 100mm and still have the holes, so I made it 150mm and cut it.
Would be cool if we made the carriage or something that goes on the carriage have detents for the arm. Then we could lock it into place at multiple different heights.
I’ve thought this same thing several times! The detents would need to be “ratchet like”, so that the dust shoe could be pushed up out of detent by the downward force of the LowRider on the material.
Also, I have thought pretty often about the suggestion early on (I think by @jeffeb3) that a stepper motor be attached to this thing, that works in the opposite of the LowRider’s normal Z. It could perhaps be powered by a same driver that powers the Z but just have its wiring flipped, and it would continually adjust the dust shoe up as the LowRider moved down. But for purposes of adjusting to thickness of material, one would need to be able to disengage the floating Z dust shoe from this motor shaft and then reengage it at the right height.
You would be better off using A to power it so you could set its height independent of Z and that would take away your need to disengage it. Should be easy to handle in fluid but that’s all above my pay grade lol
If you move it to another axis (A), then you need to support that in CAM. If you just wanted it at a constant height relative to the top of your workpiece, the inverted Z would be zero software.
Man I am jealous. I’ve been wanting to do the floating Z for a while but have prioritized other things like a laser. Having a hard time convincing myself to spend $30+ on a hose I only need like 10% of
Use the rest as a secondary clean up hose. Even with the better dust collection there will always be some down in the cut that needs cleaned up afterwards
My concern with this approach would be range of motion. I suspect there would be problems with the float carriage topping or bottoming out as it tries to match the full range of the beam. Unless there was a way to limit the range of the float, it seems like a problem.
I don’t think I would recommend making the bristles out of TPU. They are too stiff and are able to push the boot off into the router bit. I might have to remake this with the foam / something much more flexible.
I didn’t know this until a recent video but apparently there are different amounts of flex for different TPU filaments. Some more stiff like what you have and some way more flexible. I’ve only ever printing 1 thing in TPU and it was about as stiff as what you have there. I do have a roll of ninja flex here, that one is supposed to be more flexible. Wonder if it would work for the brushes. I’ve always just cut mine from EVA foam on the diode laser
Yeah, this is pretty soft TPU, I could check the number in a bit.
But the takeaway is that it has to be soft enough to compress on its on. Like the bottom of the boot should be touching the table in my pic, not supported by the bristles.
There are different numbers of TPU that different degrees of flexibility. It may be that a different type would actually work. What number was on what you used?
I printed my new “Universal Slope-ie Ramp-ie Thing” and glued it onto the bottom of the shoe body, and it worked as well as I hoped it would. It touches the material before the bristles get compressed down, and causes the shoe to “sled” on the material with a minimal amount of contact, and because its sides are gently sloped, it allows the floating Z shoe to climb up over obstacles. Full details below.
, but I think you did a really nice job with these parts. They feel like original LR3 parts.
